Children Used As ‘Guinea Pigs’ in Unethical Clinical Trials, Infecting Many With Hepatitis C and HIV

Newly disclosed documents accessed by BBC News have brought to light the shocking extent of medical trials carried out on children during the 1970s and 80s, using infected blood products. These revelations have uncovered a hidden landscape of unsafe clinical testing within the UK, where the priorities of medical professionals placed research goals above the well-being of patients. Lasting for more than 15 years and involving hundreds of individuals, these trials resulted in the majority of participants contracting hepatitis C and HIV. Surviving patients have come forward, sharing harrowing accounts of being treated as mere "guinea pigs" in these experiments.

The trials targeted children suffering from blood clotting disorders, often without the consent of their families. Tragically, the majority of these children, who were recruited into the trials, have since passed away. Further examination of the documents reveals that doctors at hemophilia centers nationwide administered blood products despite widespread awareness of their potential contamination.

According to a report of BBC, A shortage of blood products in the UK in the 1970s and 80s meant they were imported from the US. High-risk donors such as prisoners and drug addicts provided the plasma for the treatments that were infected with potentially fatal viruses including hepatitis C - which attacks the liver resulting in cirrhosis and cancer - and HIV.

Guinea pig
Luke O'Shea-Phillips, aged 42, suffers from mild hemophilia, a condition making him prone to easy bruising and bleeding. His encounter with the potentially life-threatening hepatitis C virus occurred during treatment at London's Middlesex Hospital in 1985. Shockingly, documents obtained by the BBC indicate that he may have been intentionally administered a blood product, known to possibly be infected, in order to facilitate his enrollment in a clinical trial.

In an effort to gauge the risk of patients contracting diseases from a new iteration of heat-treated Factor VIII, Luke, who had never undergone treatment for his condition previously, was administered this experimental treatment to halt bleeding in his mouth. A letter penned by Luke's physician, Samuel Machin, addressed to another hemophilia expert, was presented as evidence during the public inquiry into the infected blood scandal.

Writing to Peter Kernoff, at London's Royal Free Hospital, Dr Machin detailed the treatment of Luke and another boy, asking: "I hope they will be suitable for your heat-treated trial."

According to a report of BBC, Prior to these events, Dr. Kernoff had urged his colleagues within the medical community to identify appropriate candidates for clinical trials. Specifically, he emphasized the need for "previously untreated patients," commonly referred to as "PUPs" in medical circles. "I was a guinea pig in clinical trials that could have killed me," Luke told the BBC. "There is no other way to explain it - my treatment was changed so I could be enrolled in clinical trials. This change in medication gave me a fatal disease - hepatitis C - yet my mother was never even told."